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World’s 1st Fully Solar-Powered Train

An Australian rail company has restored a disused train to be 100% powered by solar energy- a world first for the transportation sector. The Byron Bay Railroad Company has refurbished a 70-year-old stretch of track, 3 kilometers between the town of Byron Bay—a beachside town in the northeast of the state of New South Wales, and the Elements of Byron Bay resort, UK-based Climate Action Program reported. The train features a 6.5-kilowatt custom curved solar array located on the roofs of the carriages that feed the on-board 77 kilowatt-hour battery storage system—a capacity same as that in a Tesla Model S, able to provide sufficient storage for 12-15 trips. The train still has one of the original two diesel engines in case of emergency in the event of a fault in the electric drive system, but all the train’s systems are originally planned to be powered by solar energy and battery storage.